What is Considered Indecent Dress of Women by the Supreme Authority of the Church? (1930)

[1328] Question: I there any authoritative statement of the Holy  See as to what constitutes indecent dress of women? It is evident that effective action against unchristian fashions for women can be had only if one can point out with precision things that are judged indecent by the Church. —VERITAS

Answer: Yes, there is such an authoritative statement. Recently one of our correspondents has kindly sent us a copy of a leaflet published by the Central Bureau of the Catholic Central Verein, with the Imprimatur of the Most Rev. John J. Glennon, Archbishop of St. Louis. In this leaflet there are translated from the Instruction of the Sacred Congregation of the Council, January 12, 1930 (cfr. THE HOMILETIC AND PASTORAL REVIEW, April, 1930, pp. 757-759), those points which the Holy See wants the bishops to attend to in an effort to stop the spread of indecent fashions for women. So earnest is the Holy See about this matter that it requires the bishops to state in their quinquennial report on the state of their dioceses what they have done to counteract this evil. Furthermore, the above-mentioned leaflet draws attention to the fact that the aforesaid Instruction incorporates by reference a letter of the Sacred Congregation of Religious, August 23, 1928, to the religious communities of women in the City of Rome conducting girls' schools. In that letter specific directions are given as to what the Holy See considers unbecoming dress for Catholic women and girls. We quote from the leaflet: "In order that uniformity of understanding prevail in all institutions of religious women regarding the cases in which the aforecited [sic] prescriptions of the Congregation of Religious apply, we recall that a dress cannot be called decent which is cut deeper than two fingers' breadth under the pit of the throat, which does not cover the arms at least to the elbows, and scarcely reaches a bit beyond the knees. Furthermore, dresses of transparent material are improper, as also flesh-colored stockings, which suggest the legs being bare."

The reader can judge for himself how many of the Catholic ladies, young and old, contradict the teaching of the Supreme Authority of the Church in their manner of dressing, not only in the streets, but even in our churches and when approaching Holy [1329] Communion. The spirit of liberty in its exaggerated form, and the lack of delicacy of Christian modesty lost through contact with life in the midst of an overwhelmingly large neo-pagan population that is mostly Christian in name only, have made even ordinarily good Catholic women and young ladies unconscious of the indecency of modern dress and its offense against public Christian morality. It will require a country-wide concerted effort of the Catholic Church in the United States to bring back to them the Christian sense of modesty, not by impatient scolding and severe condemnation and penalties, but by persistent and uniform teaching of the high sense of morality evidenced in the lives of the Saints and the vast majority of our Catholic ancestors.

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Source: Stanislaus Woywod, OFM, LLB, "What is Considered Indecent Dress of Women by the Supreme Authority of the Church?" The Homiletic and Pastoral Review 30, no. 12 (Sept. 1930): 1328–1329.

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